Casa Mila / La Pedrera

Casa Mila is an apartment building designed by Gaudi for the Mila family and built between 1906 and 1912. It is commonly known as La Pedrera because of its resemblance to a stone quarry. As usual with Gaudi’s work, there are few straight lines and the curves are inspired by nature.

Within the building are two courtyards open to the sky. These allow for lots of light and ventilation, so the apartments have lots of windows both on the inside and outside of the building. The 2nd and 3rd photos above show a covered walkway up to the next floor, but the normal ways up are the elevator and stairwells around the building. We took the stairs because the wait for the elevator was huge. The ironwork on the interior balconies is also fantastic.

This model of the building shows the courtyards and ventilation shafts as well as the flowing architecture.

After climbing many flights of stairs, we got to the floor showing an apartment that has been restored for tourists. It also contained a gift shop. As you can see, the doorways are curved and the ceilings are decorated.

We the climbed the stairs to the attic, which was surprisingly roomy with its curved ceiling. The attic was set up with exhibits, including a large, detailed model of the building. As with Sagrada Familia, Gaudi used an upside-down model to design the structural components of the building. He also designed furniture for the building. It doesn’t look particularly comfortable to me, but the audio tour says it is.

Climbing from the attic to the roof gave us our first views of the “Warrior Rooftop” where the ventilation towers and chimneys have fantastic designs and shapes! Many are covered using trencadis to decorate and protect them with broken and recycled tile and stone.

Views into the interior courtyards. I imagine the fences are because of the tourists and probably weren’t original.

The exterior of the building has lots of curves even around the top.

Of course, the roof of La Pedrera has magnificent views of Sagrada Familia!

The final image from the roof of La Pedrera is towards the hills North of Barcelona. That communications tower apparently (according to the bus tour) has meeting rooms built into it, so people can have business meetings and events overlooking Barcelona, which would be spectacular.

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